ACHR REVIEW[The
weekly commentary and analysis of the Asian Centre for Human Rights
(ACHR) on human rights and governance issues]

Embargoed
for: 21 December 2005

Review:
104/05

Munir's
Murder: Assassin down, masterminds to go?

The sentencing of a pilot of Indonesian
national airline Garuda, Mr Pollycarpus Budihari
Priyanto to 14 years in jail
on 20 December 2005 by Central Jakarta District Court
for the murder of Indonesia's fearless human rights
defender, Munir Said Thalib on 7 September 2004 aboard
a Garuda flight is a step in the right direction. However,
it seriously falls short of identifying the masterminds
of the murder. The role of Pilot Priyanto in the "premeditated
murder and of falsifying documents (in order to fly
aboard the same plane

Munir,
Courtesy: BBC News

as Munir)" has been established
beyond any reasonable doubt. At the same time, the fact that
officials of Indonesia's
powerful spy agency, State Intelligence Agency (BIN), masterminded the murder has also been established
beyond reasonable doubt. The
issue is whether President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono
(SBY) will ensure compliance with the order of the Central Jakarta District
Court to the law enforcement agencies to further investigate
the high-profile murder so as to find the masterminds of the
murder.

I. Murder most foul

Munir became an icon
for fearlessly defending
human rights and fundamental freedoms. He earned the wrath of the military for taking
up the cases of numerous activists who disappeared in suspicious
circumstances as well as for exposing violations committed
by the Indonesian military across the country during the rule
of former President Soeharto.

After the fall of Soehartio, Munir continued
his struggle for demcoracy and human rights.

On 26 and 27 May 2002,
approximately 100 members of the paramilitary youth group
Pemuda Panca Marga (PPM) attacked the offices of Kontras,
a NGO Munir co-founded, in Jakarta

a

fter he criticised the Government's
decision to launch a military offensive in Aceh. The PPM members, many
of whom are the children of veterans, reportedly destroyed
office equipment and injured three Kontras staffers. Among
those injured was coordinator Ori Rachman, who was forced
to sing a patriotic song and beaten when he did not know all
of the words. Jakarta police failed to answer Kontras' calls
for help during the May 26 attack. Police Chief Sukrawardi
Dahlan reportedly explained that all his officers were at
a meeting at the time and were unable to respond. On 28 May
2005, TNI commander General Endriartono Sutarto stated that
Kontras should reflect on the attackers' motivation.

Munir consistently received death threats. He once said he had lost
count of the number of death threats he had received.

On 7 September 2004, Munir
was found dead aboard a Garuda flight from Jakarta to the
Amsterdam. When the flight made a stopover at Singapore
airport, Munir is said to have sent an SMS text message to
his wife telling her that he was feeling ill. A few hours
later he was dead. His death had been put down to natural
causes by the Indonesian government. But an autopsy by the
Dutch authorities found a lethal dose of arsenic, of nearly
500 milligrams, in his bloodstream. The arsenic was laced
in the orange juice served to Munir. After the findings of
the autopsy, Indonesian government was forced to take some
action.

II.
Pilot Pollycarpus: An accomplice, not the mastermind

The police charged Garuda pilot Mr Pollycarpus for the murder and
named two others - Oedi Irianto, who was working in the galley
in the flight Munir died on, and stewardess Yeti Susmiarti,
as suspects.

Mr Pollycarpus admitted to giving his business class
seat to Munir during the flight from Jakarta to Singapore.In addition to conspiring to murder Munir,
Pollycarpus was also found guilty of forging a letter that
authorized him to travel to Singapore as an aviation security
officer to ensure that he was on the same flight as Munir. Pollycarpus had initially been assigned to
fly to Bangkok from 5 September 2004 to 9 September 2004,
but he produced falsified documents so as to be able to be
on the same flight as Munir to the Netherlands on 6 September
2004.

Lawyers for Mr Pollycarpus have accused prosecutors of fabricating
a motive for the killing. They said Mr Pollycarpus had been
made a scapegoat because the real murderer had not been found.

III. The masterminds: The State Intelligence
Agency (BIN)

"There are indications of [the intelligence agency's] involvement...
but we cannot say whether the agency was involved as an institution
or whether it was just individual officers," said Asmara
Nababan, deputy chairman of the fact finding team, set up by President
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) to assist police in investigating
the case.

The fact-finding team set
up by President SBY concluded that Mr Pollycarpus was an agent
of the State Intelligence Agency (BIN) while serving as a
pilot and that the murder was a conspiracy in which several
BIN agents were involved. The team recommended that the police should
also open an investigation into the former chief of the intelligence
agency, Abdullah Hendropriyono, and several of his deputies,
including Muchdi Purwopranjono, the former chief of the army
special forces unit.

The team recommended that three former BIN officials

be questioned by police

.

Mr Hendropriyono refused to testify in front of the investigating
panel.

The prosecution however
made startling revelations about the involvement of Mr Muchdi Purwopranjono. Prosecutors
submitted before the court that 41 phone calls had been made
from Muchdi's cellphone number (0811900xxx) to Pollycarpus
(081584304xxx) before and after the murder, as evidence in
a print out provided by telecommunications firm PT Telkom.

"In those conversations, the two discussed
the killing of Munir as he continued to sharply criticized
the government and the military," stated presiding judge of Central Jakarta District Court, Cicut Sutiarso.

Mr Muchdi
claimed that he did not know Mr Pollycarpus Budihari Priyanto
but acknowledged that there had been several phone contacts
from his cellphone to that of Mr Pollycarpus by his aides.
Muchdi has denied any wrong
doing. "The court, however, disbelieves his denial as
the telephone records show calls between the two cellular
phones, one of which was Muchdi's official number," stated
Judge Cicut.

IV. The price for speaking
the truth

There
are serious doubts as to whether police investigation into
the murder of Munir will lead to the prosecution of the masterminds
such as Muchdi. Brig. Gen. Marsudi Hanafi, who chaired the
police team investigating the high-profile murder case, has
been transferred into a non-portfolio job at National Police
headquarters to halt the investigation process. A police team
of 34 officers had been appointed to carry out the investigation
after the fact-finding team's tenure expired in June 2005.
However, only two officers, including Marsudi, were actually
conducting investigations, while the rest had been given other
jobs.

Mr Pollycarpus repeatedly said he had been made a
scapegoat. If indeed, he is a scapegoat, time has come to
name the masterminds as his complicity in the crime has been
established beyond reasonable doubt.

Speaking the truth has never been easy in Indonesia, even after the
fall of Suharto. Munir paid with his life. His widow, Suciwati
was sent a death threat in a particularly graphic and gruesome
form.The threat was sent in a box containing the
dismembered body parts of a rotting chicken along with a typed
message which read: "Beware. Don't link the Indonesian
military with Munir's death. Do you want to end up like this?"

Behind the nascent democracy lies the stronghold of the military
on the State aparatus of Indonesia.The prosecution of the masterminds of the murder of
Munir will be the litmus test for President SBY’s commitment
to rule of law and justice – the two key features of any democracy.
Munir gave his life for democracy and human rights in Indonesia;
and President SBY, the first democratically elected President,
has a responsibility to bring the masterminds of his murder
to justice.